The Search

As I was chatting earlier with a friend, the search doesn't really work, does it?

To be sure, the drop-down results thing is nice, and I'm all for that. However, if one doesn't find the desired result in the list, or just wants to see everything on the site (reviews, band info, news et al.) relating to that search, the search returns.. the index page. That's not cool!

This is even more aggravating when it comes to bands that contain non-standard symbols in the name. Take Negura Bunget, for instance. It's true that the band's name is Negură Bunget, but you'll most commonly see it referred to in the internationally standardised Negura Bunget spelling; try searching for Negura and you'll not get them in the drop-down. The same holds for far more famous bands, like Motorhead or Motley Crue. Actually, Motorhead, one of the most well-known bands ever, is impossible to find on the site, unless you type "mot" and then visually search for them in the list.

Suggestions:

While the adaptive drop-down is nice, it's not a replacement for a standard-behaviour search. That is to say, it's nice to add it on top of a standard search, but not to have it replace a standard search.

Implementing a results approximation script would be nice as well, so that if someone does type NEGURA and hits enter, they wouldn't get a "say what now?" message, but rather a "were you looking for NEGURĂ BUNGET?" message.

Finally, a search results page should contain links to:
- add a missing band. If the users(or bands themselves) can do the research work for you, why not allow them?
- report a mistake. This should be everywhere, makes the users feel in control. :P
- suggest/add a missing-but-named-the-same-band. Ok, so the engine found 5 bands with this name... but I was actually looking for a sixth, and they may be difficult to track down.

Good ideas there. I believe we will be getting a Google-based search option at some point (which would mean that you can find all kinds of stuff, not only bands), but Google has been acting weirdly with this site so I'm not sure that how this option is developing at the moment. Some light into this, webmasters? 

Speaking of Negură Bunget, I have added "Negura Bunget" as an alternative band name for it - that is possible to do here. But that doesn't seem to have improved anything - still impossible to find Negură Bunget when you search Negura Bunget.

I hold in high priority that MMA does things better than EM (Metal Archives), otherwise the purpose of MMA would be almost non-existent. We already have a better looking (and definitely mode modern than EM's) layout but there are many things to still be better in.

But as it its clear, we've been online for 4 months or so, and for that time I think we've been doing rather well. You've made some great suggestions and I hope the webmasters take them into consideration. :-)

Thanks Ulfednar for the great suggestions you made here. We really appreciate this and don't take personally any criticism that is made diplomatically like you did. We know the site isn't perfect and there is place for improvements. The site is pretty new (a few months old like Vehemency said) and it was built and is maintain on a partial time basis. Technically, all you suggestions are doable, and like I say to my boss at work, the limit is not what can be done but when (or at what cost) you need it!

[slightly off-topic] Wow, I'm actually starting to get search results when putting some underground band names into Google (and on first page)! In some cases they are higher than EM. "Chronaexus", for example, is the 8th search result.